Today, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has released a new study on health insurance costs that shows enormous increases that far outpace income.

For workers lucky enough to still have defined benefit pensions, PBGC, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, is their protection from destitution in old age. Take the 1600 former employees of the now bankrupt Austin Co. in Cleveland, Ohio. Because the PBGC stepped in, those employees will get pensions.

But the PBGC can't do this forever, and it is especially challenged in this financial climate. So you can imagine that it might be tempted to make high-return, high-risk investments. And you'd be right.

A couple months ago, we reported that the Bush Administration had fudged the figures on mining injuries in order to claim that they were far worse under Bill Clinton. Untrue, of course. February 06, 2008 Mining Disasters - Whose Fault? MSHA's Stickler Blames Bill Clinton. Now a new report shows that on the job deaths for 2006 were worse than claimed.

Among the new settlements from the EEOC is: Wal-Mart to Pay $300,000 to Rejected Job Applicant with Disability. It seems that the plaintiff had believed Wal-Mart's ads showing happy people with disabilities working there. But no more.

Governor Bill Richardson is seeking Outstanding National Resource Waters (ONRW) protection under the federal Clean Water Act for a little more than 5,300 miles of New Mexico's rivers and streams.

Another precedent-setting move from New Mexico.

Unions and labor federations representing millions of workers have filed an international complaint today under the NAFTA labor side agreement charging North Carolina with violating international labor rights standards under NAFTA's NAALC. The basis of the charge is that North Carolina's denying the right to bargain collectively to 650,000 public employees violates international law.

In a report issued today, the GAO examined evidence that abstinence education programs are effective on measures such delaying sexual activity and other justifications for their receipt of federal funds. In addition, GAO noted that although HHS and the states are required to assess the scientific accuracy of materials used in abstinence-until-marriage education programs, but this appears not to have been done in many cases. GAO noted that as “of October 2006, HHS’s ACF—which awards grants under two programs that account for the largest portion of federal spending on abstinence education—did not review its grantees’ education materials for scientific accuracy, nor did it require grantees of either program to do so.” And there are more failures.

As I noted yesterday, Six New Mexico conservation groups have filed a protest with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over the April 16, 2008 sale of eighty-three oil and gas leases in New Mexico totaling nearly 103,000 acres.

The Protest is based on BLM’s failure of the BLM to address climate change before it sells oil and gas drilling leases. An innovative approach. These leases are a big deal because they convey legal rights to oil and gas companies to drill. BLM and the oil and gas industry like to claim that they’ll do analysis right before they drill but, at this point, the deed has been done and the pre-drill analysis is little more than a sham.

Last week, six New Mexico conservation groups and the Western Environmental Law Center filed a protest with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over the April 16, 2008 sale of eighty-three oil and gas leases in New Mexico totaling nearly 103,000 acres.

Why is this a big deal?

This protest is groundbreaking. As far as I know, a protest of oil and gas leases based on the effects of climate change has never before been attempted.

This is a big deal.

To hear the Right Wing talk about it, you would think that education is a private possession and thus the costs should be borne solely by the person getting the education - or their family. The result of this view - one that has become accepted as the norm - has been that poor students have taken on enormous debt loads. And some have just given up on getting an education.

The big losers are all of us. We are all beneficiaries of having educated citizens to bear the responsibilities of a democracy. And we directly benefit from having well qualified doctors, scientists at the Centers for Disease Control, and teachers for the next generation. Add to these losses those caused by the predatory loan industry in recent years.

Today the Senate held a field hearing on the subject of student loans.

The last few weeks have been an absolute nightmare for anyone connected with flying - and that has to be most of us. Whether it's a level of airplane safety that may well have fallen below that of impoverished countries, being stranded, or just what are now the regular hassles and humiliations of airline travel, I think that we now have adequate data to say that the airline deregulation experiment has demonstrated that the free market is a very, very bad way to provide air transportation. And the benefits we were supposed to get, cheaper tickets, come down to about $35 a ticket.

Proponents of the controversial "egg as a person" initiative have just one month left to submit petitions to the Colorado secretary of state to certify the measure for the Nov. 4 ballot. Now, in the frenzy of the signature-gathering push the campaign is taking a decidedly more aggressive tone -- toward its own.

Open CRS is a treasure trove of information. It collects reports by the Congressional Research Service and makes them available to the public. But for their efforts, the reports we pay for would not be accessible to us.

Two recently acquired reports caught my eye.

posted with permission from David Williams

The passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would be a good step in reforming labor law in the U.S. but much more is needed. Over the last few years some labor folks who have been frustrated by the lack of worker justice coming from the National Labor Relations Board (the Board) have engaged in a strategy of boycotting the NRLB. This strategy is designed to send a message to the Board and elected officials that the NLRB is not fulfilling its mission of protecting workers rights.

There are several problems with a “Boycott the Board” strategy.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute has released “Pulling Apart”, a study on national income disparity.

Low- and middle-income families have reaped few gains since the late 1990s, despite the recent years of economic prosperity. Average incomes actually fell by 2.5% for those in the bottom fifth of the income scale and rose by just 1.3% for those in the middle fifth. Meanwhile, incomes climbed 9% for those in the top fifth.

The report wasnt good. Especially for New Mexico.

This is the final part in this series covering testimony at the hearing on the state of SCHIP, especially in the aftermath of the Bush Administration's August 17 directive imposing hurdles on the coverage of poor children.

This is the third part describing and commenting on testimony at the April 9 hearing on the Bush Administration's August 17 directive related to SCHIP. The hearing explored the impact of the directive on providing health coverage to poor children and on usurping Congress' powers.

Part 1 of this report may be found here. Part I included testimony by a woman about her family's struggle to provide health care to their children. For all follow-up posts, consider the testimony against this woman's lived experience. This part covers opening statements at the April 9, 2008 hearing. Statements of witnesses are in the next two posts.

On April 9, 2008 the Senate Subcommittee on Health Care held a Hearing - “Covering Uninsured Children: The Impact of the August 17 CHIP Directive.”

Most of the witnesses were experts in this area who testified about theories and data.

One of the witnesses was the mother of a disabled child, a woman struggling with illness, accidents, and poverty, a woman trying to earn a living and help care for her children.

The pundits will be in the next post. First, let's hear the voice of this mother so we have a context into which to place the data and theories.

An important part of our government is the regulator process. The Administrative Procedure Act mandates public participation in key parts of the regulatory process. However, being heard means knowing that comments are invited on an issue of concern and then trying to find what you are lookinf for and then wade through the information on making your comments. Frustrating, because it is now so available on line. But keep in mind, until recently, you could only find this information by going to a law or other legal or very large library and then wade through all sorts of confusing books.

But that has changed now.

I have to admit that I dont quite remember the first time I visited Nine Mile Canyon. I must have been about eight years old because I have a picture of my mom and I holding hands next to a petroglyph. In the picture, she was wearing a head scarf. I was wearing a Chewbacca Tshirt. It must have been about 1977-78. Anyway, I do remember the last time, It was nearly ten years ago. I was with my Uncle Joe and we were in Utah to raft Desolation Canyon.

I hear there is a risk of flooding along the Mississippi River. So I hopped on over to FEMA to check out their warnings about the situation. I read the warnings about how seriously dangerous floods can be and then clicked on What is the flood risk where I live? only to get the FEMA equivalent of being 404d.

Server Unavailable

The Mapping Information Platform (MIP at hazards.fema.gov) is currently unavailable due to maintenance.

Thank you for your continued use and support of the MIP. If you have any questions or comments, please contact MIP Help Desk at miphelp[at]mapmodteam[dot]com or 1-877-FEMA-MAP.

We face the prospect of millions of destitute older Americans. A new survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows huge percentages of people are not saving enough for retirement, have no idea how much money it will take to survive in retirement, and who have unrealistic expectations about their ability to earn money after retirement.

Arf! Arf! Arf! OK, not exactly in the window, but go to Craig's List or e-bay, and you can buy enough stolen US military equipment to make your own F-14 or credibly pose as a US officer. Among the items for sale are F-14 components, Night vision goggles containing an image intensifier tube made to military specifications, Army Combat Uniform (ACU) and uniform accessories, Body armor vests and Small Arms Protective Inserts (SAPI), including advanced Enhanced SAPI (E-SAPI) plates, Kevlar helmets, flak jackets, gas masks, and military meals ready-to-eat (MRE).

Darn! I have been so frustrated seeing a GAO report make headline news . . . and I could not find it on-line. But it was released to the public today. You all know the issues that have made the news. Lots of stuff illegally bought with government funds. What I will add here is the link if you want to read the whole report and GAO's battle with GSA over how to respond to the mess.

Dillard's department store promotes itself as being the store that has a bead on the "Style of Your Life" - and Dillard's management style in responding to sexual harassment appears to be all style with no substance. Dillard's - The Style of Your Life?

It seems that teenaged girls who work for a McDonalds' franchise in Colorado didn't know that they were signing on for a job that included supervisor groping, biting the employees' breasts, and sexist comments.

In a speech Tuesday, April 8, at the American Hospital Association's annual membership meeting, David Walker, who just recently resigned as Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office, said that he supported

Providing universal coverage for "basic and essential" health care services is one part of an overarching strategy to address the financial crisis in the health care system.

This morning's Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on Iraq showed pretty decisively that the Bush administration's policies are made of straw. Their chief advocate in the Senate, John McCain, delivered an uninspired and somewhat risible defense of them. Here is the conclusion of John McCain's prepared remarks (PDF):

Congress must not choose to lose in Iraq. We should choose, instead, to succeed.

That's a measure of the depth of his thinking about the morass McCain helped the nation to get into.

A couple years ago, unbossed described new research into prejudice. One part of that research was Project Implicit. That research may now be part of a new initiative by the EEOC called eRACE.

Well, this is good news:

A federal judge has blocked a British mining company from exploring for uranium near the Grand Canyon, agreeing with environmental groups which sued the U.S. Forest Service for approving the plan without full environmental reviews.

Today, April 7, is the deadline to sign up to participate in the Pennsylvania hearings whose main purpose seems to be to go after rBST-free milk, this time via a hearing on milk pricing.

And it is also the day a letter was sent to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland by public interest groups asking him not to bar us from knowing whether rBST has been used in producing our milk.

One of my favorite waste time on the Internets blog is Junk Charts, the pantheon to the bad use of statistical data.

And if that's not exciting enough for you, those wacky statisticians at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health have recorded a parody song -- Baby Got Stats.

h/t Steve Doig, Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication

The grass and sagebrush tablelands of the Taos Plateau are exceptionally large - hundreds of thousands of acres in size, in fact. If you toss in the entire San Luis Valley - and you should - to round out the full and complete ecosystem, you’re talking well over a million acres. It would take you five hours to drive its length. That’s five hours of no potty breaks forget the coffee don’t look at the birds driving. That’s a lot of driving.

Bringing Home the Bacon.

From GovExec.com:

It's not American Idol, Survivor, or even The Gong Show, but at the FedPitch 2008 competition you won't have to sing or dance either. To take the stage, all you need is a smart two-minute pitch on how to improve the federal government.

I’ve been told that the National Landscape Conservation Act is finally going to get a vote. Next Wednesday, April 9, 2008.

It's about time.

In the latest of a series of reports on the use of contractors, GAO finds that using contractors in military acquisitions costs more and increases problems with security. So much for the canard that the magic of the market can bring only good. Or maybe what they meant was only "goods" . . . to the contracting companies? Here are the details.

The U.S. Forest Service has purchased two aerial drone aircraft, according to information leaked by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a government watchdog group who clearly delight in waiting for the good ol' U.S. of A to be plunged into charbroiled chaos from unattended terrorist campfires.

The Forest Service did not explain the purpose of the $100,000 expenditure. Other than they're really cool -- honestly, how much civil liberties infringement can happen at 7,000 feet with a pair of high-flying robots equipped with day and night vision lenses and thermal cameras?

My family noticed it about a year ago. Maybe a little more. Suddenly, our grocery bill seemed to rise. I didn’t give it much thought a first and didn’t track it too closely but at the end of 2007 when I added up our expenses it was like a hammer in the head! Our food bill had gone up 10-15%!!

Ouch.

by Deep Harm crossposted from Daily Kos with permission of the author

Fifty-nine percent of physicians support creating a national health insurance program, according to a survey involving 2, 193 physicians. Nine percent had a neutral position.